Oliver Schwerdt/Barry Guy/Baby Sommer

Satoko Fujii Tokyo Trio
Jet Black
Libra Records 203-073

Piano-bass-drums trio realizations vary depending on the concepts and participants. That might seem like a truism. But listening to these CDs together confirms that there can be truth in  cliché, Both Fucking Ballads and Jet Black will be classified as improvised music. Yet the free-for-all pressure exhibited on the first links the two live tracks to still vibrant Free Jazz that begin in the 1960s. No less exploratory, but more codified, Jet Black’s six tracks are one composer’s ideas interpreted by that person and adventurous associates.

Fucking Ballads is no nostalgia recreation either. While two members of the trio were around to participate in the birth of European Free Music, with numerous other ensembles, the third is a veritable tyro. British bassist Barry Guy is best known for leading the London Jazz Composers Orchestra, while drummer/percussionist Günter “Baby” Sommer was part of the DDR’s most prominent Free Jazz quartet Synopsis. While considerably younger, pianist Oliver Schwerdt, who seems to have played with every music innovator who comes through his Leipzig hometown of many genres and ages.

Jet Black on the other hand is a product of the subsequent cohort of free players past Free Music’s beginnings. Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii, who composed all the tracks, has worked with multiple creative players of every generation. Her fellow Nipponese associates, bassist Takashi Sugawa and drummer Ittetsu Takemura, are some of the busiest on the island, playing with the likes of Sadao Watanabe and others.

With the challenging cry of “Ready, Freddy” Schwerdt/Guy/Sommer explode onto the stage with piano key pumps, chunky string thumps and dead-on percussion smashes expanded with tremolo harmonica swelling, a wailing siren and hollow marimba pops, all vibrated by the drummer. The exposition tightens as it moves into a build ups of cross pulsing key clipping and strokes on the piano’s internal string set; buzzing and ratcheting reverberations from the double bassist and piles of unexpected percussion asides from wooden echoes to figurative tap dancing on the drum tops.

As cacophonous as these moves may be, the energy and pressure expended on the sounds also involves a horizontal group narrative. So no matter how often Sommer in particular ruffles and redistributes cadences that project tones encompassing ringing church bells and polo-bat-like smacks, Guy’s sophisticated string frails expressed with the finesse of an acoustic guitarist or shrilled with bow manipulation, keep the narrative on an expected linear path. Giving Schwerd all the freedom he needs, his contrasting dynamics layer further tension onto the performance so its release stops the seemingly unstoppable and helps coral the theme into a reasonable conclusion.

No more a ballad than the eponymous title track, “In the Vein of Beauty” unrolls at one-third of the first improvisation’s length, has inflections of a swinging beat alongside spectacular drum pivots and piano patterns ascending the scale. Also emphasized is the same formula of one-part theatrical stagecraft and one part reciprocal comping.

More concentrated but no less compelling, the Tokyo Trio’s tracks touch on more avenues than out-and-out Free Jazz. Sometimes a subtle colorist, sometimes an unrestrained explorer, Fujii and her compositions touch on tones and tempos from the barely there to the stentorian and from methodical to melee. Her expositions can include the quiet expansion of simple rounded notes until each extension is probed, as on the title track, or as on “Along the Way” develop a Boppish line to  become tinkling swing, with responsive swirls  and intermittent coloring.

Sugawa and Takemura contribute their own sound coloring with motifs ranging from sul tasto scrubs and thumping string stops from the bassist to metallic rim dances and tom-tom-like thumps from the drummer. But these tropes are usually developed in tandem with the pianist, whether her output is snazzy, sympathetic, sweeping or strained. Instinctively her good taste balances the scales, though, so that pedal point pressure, plucking or lobbing implements onto the piano’s internal string set or suddenly introducing a stop-time interlude is never taken to excess.

Overall, her playing default is to contrapuntal coordination and realization, including recapping the heads and in the case of “Sky Reflection” facing down the rhythm sections’ rattling harshness, with a moderated, reverberating slow groove that seeps high and low textures into a vibrating finale.

Combative or cerebral, piano trio improvisations can take many satisfying forms as these European and Japanese ensemble demonstrate.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Fucking: 1. Fucking Ballads 2. In the Vein of Beauty

Personnel: Fucking: Oliver Schwerdt (piano, percussion and little instruments); Barry Guy (bass) and Baby Sommer (drums, cymbals and percussion)

Track Listing: Jet: 1. Along the Way 2. Gentle Slope 3. Sky Reflection 4. From Sometime 5. Take a Step 6. Jet Black

Personnel: Jet: Satoko Fujii (piano); Takashi Sugawa (bass) and Ittetsu Takemura (drums)